Thankful Fors

I've been thinking this week about what I'm thankful for. There are so many things, some trivial, some not so. I am thankful for my yoga teacher, Helen McGee, tonight, because my yoga practice last night reminded me that yoga, and life, are work juxtaposed with joy.

Sometimes I feel that because I have no children of my own, I have no joy, but there is so much joy interspersed throughout my life in small doses that I sometimes forget it. Joy does not come from other people, even children: it comes from inside. It is important to remember, when something is difficult or annoying, like &$@@%# chair pose, or revolved triangle, or whatever doesn't seem to be working any given week, that there is joy to be found not only in doing it, but in the fact that I can do it. Life is also work, and joy, in equal measure. Sometimes in yoga, and in work, I find myself striving so hard. To get, to be, to achieve the next thing, the next level. I have to remind myself to be joyful at that very second, relax for just a second the need to strive endlessly toward an ever-moving horizon.

I am grateful for my home, which is calm and warm and welcoming. I know that although I don't have a "home" to go home to for the holidays, where my husband Mike is will always be home. I will always have a home that feels like coming home with my friend Karen. I am grateful for being able to practice yoga, because I may not always be strong or able enough to do so. I am grateful for all of my little girls and boys, who allow me to share some of the overflowing love that I have for little people with them, and give some back, too. (Children, that is, not Little People.)



I am so grateful for my friendship with my grandparents. Maybe it wasn't the best thing that my parents had children so young, but it has given me the opportunity to come to know my grandparents as people and as friends. I feel very lucky to have had that chance. I'm thankful that I still have my parents, and I hope that we can find ways to understand each other better.

I am grateful for my friends, new and old. I have always been the sort of person who doesn't notice the passing of time with friends. I am happy to jump back in wherever we last left off.

I am grateful for my husband Mike. He is really a good man. Today, I listened to him talk to the one-millionth lost tourist, trying to find Stag's Leap Wine Cellars, who ended up here at Stags' Leap Winery. He was patient and good-humored and kind.

When I drive to the winery a couple of days each week, there is a house on a corner on the north-west side of Redwood Road. There is always a ladder leaning horizontally against the wall, and a small pickup truck in the driveway. In the house lives a grandfather, and probably a grandmother. On weekdays, the grandfather is outside in the front yard in the morning with a fat old, amiable chocolate labrador retriever and a toddler who looks to be just starting to really walk on his own.

When I see them outside in the yard, it makes me cry, and I don't know why. It makes my day when they are there as I speed by. I feel like I want them to be there forever, walking down the sidewalk along the edge of the lawn, or down the front path. Today, the baby boy was throwing an apple into the street. The dog was wagging his tail slowly. I've honked and waved at them before, but they don't get it. The grandfather just looks puzzled as he half-waves, trying to recognize the person in the car. I'm thankful for them, too.

I guess I've gotten to that point in my life where I start to cry at just about anything. I feel like I realize how precious things are, and it has turned me into a gooey human Cadbury egg, less the tooth-killing sweetness. There are tons of things that aren't perfect in my life, but at this moment, this 2007 day before Thanksgiving moment, I don't really care. Life is so short and so full of little treasures every day. There are so many other things I'm grateful for that I haven't listed. If you're one of them, I mean you, too. Remember the part about equal parts work and joy, and allow yourself the joy part, even if you're cleaning stalls and pitching hay.

I'm just glad to be here.